GalGun: Double Peace (Vita)

To a certain extent. GalGun is harmless fluff. While the premise objectifies the female form to infinity and plants a guy in the middle of hyper-romanced schoolgirls, there’s no real harm being done as a stupid testosterone-driven fairy tale (with a $100 download for undressing options). So stupid, so heightened, so absurd, and so self-aware as to be funny when dropped into the progressive-led videogame culture.

Then GalGun keeps going, well past its acceptable zone, using women in this amped up Cupid state for purposes of groping. “Girls have places they particularly like to be touched,” reads the tutorial, as if a guide in how to be US President. In the intro menu, the option to become a “pervert” is listed last, odd considering.

It’s an indefensible thing, even in the context of spoof or satire. The emotional manipulation is worse than porn, and the fantasy arguably more harmful in high doses. Lessons here include touching women in vulnerable places at your leisure, assuming they’re openly into you. Otherwise, you’re “shooting” them to keep them at bay, trying to stay monogamous even as an entire school’s worth of Japanese women throw themselves at your feet. Sure, monogamy is GalGun’s message, to all of two people who believe that.

“It’s a joke, a gag, only debased fun!” And the sincere hope is no one alive takes this with any level of seriousness. Translated dialog enacts a crushingly obvious romantic power fantasy for the lonely or curious types. The player is incapable of doing wrong or harm, an invincible being using the power of literal touch to appease women under his spell. That’s the worrisome part.

GalGun takes a dirty old man trope and makes it an animated, interactive reality.